AFEW RULES completely cover the mysterious case of The Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2017.
![]()
by admin
AFEW RULES completely cover the mysterious case of The Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2017.
![]()
by Dara Carroll
The growth of Dublin at the expense of rural Ireland is a familiar refrain, amplified in post-crash Ireland. While it is true that Ireland has a particularly unbalanced economic and population growth pattern focused on its capital city, increased urbanisation is a global trend. Along with pressure on housing, this urbanisation poses a range of […]
![]()
Posted in:
by Thomas White
A group of United States mental health professionals has expressed concern about the mental health of Donald Trump. Psychologist Dr John Gartner said: “We do believe that Donald Trump’s mental illness is putting the entire country, and indeed the entire world, in danger. As health professionals we have an ethical duty to warn the public […]
![]()
Our new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD makes sure he gets out once a week, often to see a movie. Last year he went to see the English movie ‘I Daniel Blake’ directed by Mike Leigh. Discussing the movie at a Pobal conference he showed little sympathy for the plight of Daniel who, having suffered a […]
![]()
by Mel Reynolds
On 20 June the consumer advocacy group Right2Homes presented a National Co-Operative Bill to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. Supporting the bill was an expert panel including Edmund Honohan, Master of the High Court, homeless campaigner Fr Peter McVerry, academic Dr Rory Hearne of Maynooth University and other industry professionals. […]
![]()
Assets that are social not just financial Ireland’s housing crisis and swirling property prices threaten precious and irreplaceable green spaces in our cities and suburbs with housing developments. House prices have risen more in the first six months of this year than the entire twelve months of 2016. Recognising the opportunity for maximum prices to […]
![]()
Several years ago I lectured in a management school in England. One of the classes I gave was on food marketing. I began the class by playing a clip from the then famous documentary, ‘Super Size Me’, where the protagonist Morgan Spurlock undertakes an extreme diet of McDonald’s-only food for a month to chart the […]
![]()
by Village
A few rules completely cover the mysterious case of The Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2017. The judiciary should be independent but not self-selecting. Independence is good, preening is bad. Lawyers robustly defending the judiciary against encroachments by the executive is welcome though not if it has been fundamentally mendacious and itself cut across the independence […]
![]()
The Minister for Housing, and recent FG leadership contender, Simon Coveney, appointed a former senior Council official to investigate an allegation of financial malpractice at Cavan County Council (CCC), even though the former official had been accused in the High Court of being “up to his neck in corruption”. In March, Coveney and his department […]
![]()
by Colm Wallace
The Garda is in trouble, morale is low and there are numerous investigations into alleged incompetence and cover-ups. Village has been to the fore in detailing these delinquencies. The purpose of this article is something different: to highlight through a not untypical case the extent of the duty and the dangers of service. Overall, 88 […]
![]()
Posted in:
by Cormac Deane
After a couple of stuttering seasons, Season 6 of ‘Homeland’, which ended in April, pulled off a decently gripping story this time round. The writers make life difficult for themselves, as with its predecessor ‘24’, by making daring near-future predictions about the political reality that will be in place by the time the show airs. […]
![]()
I don’t like ‘-isms’,” War of Independence veteran George Gilmore once said to me. “Heaven save me from the Marxists!”, an exasperated Karl Marx is reputed to have exclaimed. “All the ‘-isms’ are ‘-wasms’ ”, was a witticism following the collapse of East European communism in 1991. Nonetheless ‘-isms’, ideologies of one kind or another, […]
![]()
Dante Alighieri opens ‘The Divine Comedy’ with the immortal lines: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita. (In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark wood where the straight path was lost) To the medieval mind […]
![]()
I have spoken to Fred Holroyd from time to time. Holroyd worked with the British army and MI6 in Ireland, 1973-75, and has written a book about his experience ‘War without Honour’. Incredibly, British spies are still meddling with his post. Holroyd has furnished me with a photograph of an envelope he received from me. […]
![]()
As a younger, and perhaps wiser, Leo Varadkar once said: there is no messiah who will lead Fine Gael from the desert into the promised land. This did not prevent him from presenting a decidedly messianic image as he posed for the cameras following his decisive victory in the party’s leadership contest on 2 June. Since then […]
![]()
Posted in:
As the Tribunal of Inquiry into protected disclosures and Certain Other Matters prepares for its opening statement from counsel in mid-June, Peter Charleton must be wondering what he’s let himself in for. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Supreme Court justice initially agreed to chair a commission of inquiry, a much more sedate […]
![]()
Leo Varadkar consistently asserts that he does not believe in equality of outcome but in equality of opportunity. He sees himself as “right” or “either centre right or a higher class of liberal… somebody who believes in personal freedom, someone who believes in a political economy and in a free market as the best way […]
![]()
Posted in:
Margaretta D’Arcy found herself jailed in January 2014 on the back of a protest she mounted at Shannon Airport in 2012. What was she protesting about? US troop aircraft using Shannon as a stopover on their journey to the warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan among other things. D’Arcy is a rare stalewart against the steady […]
![]()
Posted in:
Ireland is known for its literature, but not for its science fiction. There is not a great number of Irish writers in the genre, but it is a puzzling fact that major international authors such as James White and Bob Shaw are barely known in their native Ireland. Science fiction often imagines alternative life-worlds, which […]
![]()